There's
that oldtime comment about a dog playing cards: What's remarkable is not
whether the dog plays well, but the fact that he can play the game at
all.

The
challenge of managing projects often is referred to in much the same way:
The wonder is not how smooth the process or how perfect the product .
. .but the accomplishment of anything at all. Managers don't dare hope
the outcome might resemble the original intent, however blown the budget
or tattered the schedule.

The low expectations
tend to create their own reality -- and not without reason. Many factors
are arrayed against management of time, cost and quality.

To begin with,
projects are innovations, the unknown wrapped in risk. You're trying to
achieve something new, without really knowing how to do it, and you'e
under pressure of time and cost.
Oh, and you're working with diverse stakeholders from different disciplines,
and often they have adversarial reasons for being involved.

Perhaps the most
agonizing factor in an important project is that the situation really
calls for unusual discipline, collaboration and creativity among those
involved --while the circumstances are precisely those that discourage
planning, teamwork and imagination.

And, of course,
the more valuable the intended outcome, the more risky, complex and uncertain
is the process required to achieve it. PRESSure!

All of that being
true, many projects are mounted haphazardly in the belief that it's going
to be a mess anyway. Projects frequently are slowed or paralyzed by uncertainty.
Planning, direction and leadership are left out because they are considered
a waste of time.

POY to
the rescue

Enter Maine's Project of the Year competition, now in its fifth year,
currently seeking the state's best-managed projects of calendar 2006.

The Project Management
Institute has developed, over the last few decades, an organizational
Project Management Maturity Model, which specifies the knowledge and practices
that make high-return projects fully controllable and predictable. The
Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) details
what it takes to do that.

Maine's PMI chapter, which presents the POY competition, chooses independent
judges and asks them to apply PMBOK standards as well as their own professional
judgment. Judges have included a construction engineer, an economist,
project managers in several industries, university professors and a social
service executive. A few of the judges have held PMI's Project Management
Professional certification.

The judging results
have been interesting and instructive. The first competition, POY 2002,
produced co-winners of the Project of the Year designation.

One co-winner
was Cianbro Corp., for its exemplary work in completing the Portland International
Jetport parking garage ahead of schedule and without disrupting airport
operations, and without a single lost-time injury. The other was Shalom
House for development of Brannigan House, a facility for the mentally
ill that required numerous governmental and regulatory changes as well
as an efficient construction process.

There you have
it: a big construction company and a small social-service agency, designated
as equally excellent in accomplishing something very difficult and doing
it well -- each in its own way, but both meeting professional standards
of project management.

Over the years,
there has been variety in the projects that were singled out. While the
2004 winner was the superbly managed Maine Turnpike Widening, a Project
of Distinction winner that year was the joint career-development project
of the Scarborough Community Chamber and Scarborough High School. The
judges found different strengths to emphasize in the two projects, but
they saw common qualities of vision, coordination, planning and follow-through.

Last
year's Project of the Year was the Student Business Plan Competition of
USM's Center for Entrepreneurship - a successful experiment five years
in the making.

The
runner-up designation of Project of Distinction has been won by Fairchild
Semiconductor, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Ingraham, Spring Harbor
Hospital and HNTB Corp., as well as Cianbro, the Turnpike Authority and
USM for other projects.

How
they do it

What's
the secret? Some of the organizations that have won awards are not very
sophisticated in management terms, and some had never heard of the PBOK
Guide. Yet, the judging panel found that they had developed and followed
the practices of planning, inclusion, communication, collaboration, innovation
and quality management that PMI has codified into the Guide.

A
major reason for the POY competition is to popularize professional project
management as an excellent tool for innovation, and for facilitating growth
in business, the nonprofit world and public institutions. It can be especially
valuable in Maine, which faces severe challenges in such fields as economic
development.

A
methodology that so distinctly improves performance can contribute significantly
across the board. In terms of the card-playing dog, teaching the right
new tricks can put the wonder in the results.

Communication is the lifeblood of human organization, in small partnerships and large corporations – and the pipeline to their markets. Jim provides practical approaches to all the oral and written forms.

Personal Productivity is fundamental, and it consists of skills that can be examined, practiced and perfected. Likewise Leadership and Supervision. Jim has common-sense training designs for dozens of these essentials.

There is no obligation, financial or otherwise, arising from a preliminary discussion of consultation or training solutions.